Moscow Station - The Kgb Penetrated The American Embassy

May 14, 1989|By BILL MITCHELL Book Reviewer

It was two years ago this spring that American newspapers published their first detailed reports of the sex-for-secrets spy ring that prompted the Marine Corps to bust its entire 28-man Moscow contingent back to the United States.

The stories said that Sgt. Clayton Lonetree and Cpl. Arnold Bracy let Soviet agents "peruse" sensitive areas of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in exchange for sex with women hired by the KGB.

Readers trying to make sense of the scandal may have been a bit confused by subsequent developments that year.

In June, charges were dropped against Bracy. In August, Lonetree was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 30 years at hard labor. In November, investigators leaked reports that, though Lonetree had given secrets to the Soviets, neither he nor Bracy had let Soviets into the embassy.

Ronald Kessler, a former newspaper reporter, did the digging needed to get behind the headlines, including an intriguing Saturday morning visit to KGB headquarters and a fleeting phone conversation with one of the KGB ladies in question.

But it is Kessler's investigation of the Marines' embassy guard program, coupled with his portrait of Lonetree, that advances the story.

He finds gung-ho recruits leaving their Quantico, Va., training site prepared to repel an encroaching mob, but with only the most naive notions of the more subtle advances awaiting them in places like Moscow.

With the detail of a police story and the edge of a spy novel, Kessler does his best work showing how the Soviets beat the Americans with the oldest trick in the book.